Tonight’s #WgtnFilmSoc screening was the extraordinary Peter Weirs gothic masterpiece #PicnicAtHangingRock - a good 4K 50th anniversary restoration.

It’s such a thought provoking approach to reliability in narrative to this day. Great start to the Film Soc’s 80th Year!

#2wr unstable ground

I’m a bit of an Amy Berg fan since doing some incidental work on a doc of here a million years ago. She loves music. It shows.

I need to leave more voicemails with the people I love.

#2wr upgraded to #5wr Love Anger Depression Beauty Buckley

Gaylene’s #GraceAprayerForPeace just knocked my damn socks off. So glad I caught an #nziff encore screening.

Such an elegantly made work - with space to walk alongside work, and making of it, Hone destroying me all over, so many moving homecomings. This sensational doco IS art.

#2wr pacific fire

The proud tradition #nziff has with Jafar Panahi continues—I think Bill’d be happy #ItWasJustAnAccident won the Palme d’Or this year.
Very much on the page - moving from farce to pure dread by the film’s finale, and and a conclusion crafted in our own minds by our own ears.
#2WR Personal Political

#nziff closer #SentimentalValue is just so good.

Quietly effective reflecting on self, family & the healing power of cinema. So much longing in the silences. Such exquisite selection of light as a physical object in the house. The house. The humour and the pain. And love.

#2wr love mercifully

#nziff archival doco #IsraelPalistineSwedistTV1958to1989 was essential fare and does not feel like it’s nearly 4 hour runtime. Indeed its length is essential.

The additional context of Swedish television’s reportage is a deftly selected and edited additional lens.

#2wr collective instruction

Raul Pecks films are always stunning constructed - true of #Orwell2+2=5 in #nziff

I really think everyone should read Wifedom: Mrs. Orwells invisible life to expand on this story - it does nothing to diminish the work.

#2wr perpetually prescient

#nziff was in party mode for #LesbianSpacePrincess a total romp - delightful, corny as all hell, and all the better for it.

She’s a lesbian !
She’s in space !
She’s a princess !
Oh… and she’s also very sad…

I suspect this is a cult film made.

#2wr Tiny Phonetastix

Great debut #CactusPears did that quiet honest first film thing with a slow burning and really rather well structured script not so much about self-discovery but revelation and the constraints of tradition, class, and family. A #nziff pleasure to watch a slice of India less seen

#2wr special friend

I was so enamored of Haugerud’s #sex last year it was great to see #love in the years #nziff (dreams to come also!).

#love interrogates with a novelists inquisitiveness the kindness and meaning made across the more incidental meeting.

These films are so intoxicating!

#2wr utopian interrogations

#nziff continues the haunting theme with possession #WentUpTheHill a beautifully designed work exploring the echoes of abuse and echoing a character (love that acting challenge). I wanted either more visceral harm or more emotional damage to be revealed but a brave film.

#2wr finished business

Ok #nziff has a real crowd please on its hands with #DJAhmet not least because of the cutest casting in the whole festival but an utterly delightful and laugh out loud over and over take on boy meets girl

#2wr startup charm

Agonising and note perfect direction and performances by Hawke and Scott on the stairs in #nziff #BlueMoon.

Linklaters always been a master of perfect framing as this perfectly constained bar setting demonstrates. Metaphor much?

#2wr theatrical lyricism

I’m such an easy target for Guiraudie’s exquisite scripting and #nziff #Misericordia was immensely satisfying.

Disturbing - and oh so darkly funny - it could slip into farce were it not for the fact this could be happening right next door to any of us… yet again spooooooky!

#2wr slippery neonoir

#nziff erotic neo noir thriller (?) #NightStage
Looks and sounds great exploring professional and personal dualities and societal expectations - always interesting, but I wanted even more danger to balance up the horny cravings. Cool theatre set btw.

#2wr perceived performance

I’m so glad #nziff continue to programme Petzold as #MirrorsNo3 is yet another exquisitey shaped narrative concerning the things that haunt us, and the space we need to accomodate them.

And who doesn’t like Paula Beer and bicycles.

#2wr Sublime Accomodation

Hypnotic #nziff and madmaxzabriskian #Siřat looks incredible and the film sure takes us on a journey along the knife edge bridge between paradise and hell with a plot full of surprises, where one’s decencies in life define the future.

This one must be seen in a cinema.

#2wr apocolyptic meditation

#nziff Cronenberg’s #TheShrouds is a profoundly intellectual self examination of death and our fetishisation of the body.

A clearer response to tech than Crimes offered was welcome and the titular shrouds are cool. This is brave cinema born from all too imaginable pain.

#2wr grave macabre

#nziff has Bi Gan’s #resurrection an homage to cinema, and a celebration its audience. Their very resurrection in the film’s title is held as a possibility.

Essential for some, probably too much for others.

He’s really getting good at this one-shot-thing btw… heh heh.

#2wr sensory meditation

#nziff Ari Aster’s #eddington is lots of fun, especially its third act, but really only dances over the complexities tensions apparent in the states during the pandemic (from this foreigners pov)

#2wr Strange America

#nziff Thai feature #AUsefulGhost is utterly brilliant. Stunningly shot with a rich and motivated colour palette, it’s an unabashedly queer reading of history, and call to preserve it. Long but worth it for Suman’s arc alone.

Freaking loved this crazy film. Just see it.

#2wr absurdly poignant

#nziff Malaysian #AbangAbik is a very modern and gorgeous looking / sounding post pandemic work, encompassing so many filmic forms, esp found whanau and splintered society - a heart rending interrogation of life and what justice means for those undocumented local and external.
#2wr caring signs

#nziff Sundancer #plainclothes interested me because of the framing energy but that wore off quickly as the editorial approach just couldn’t seem to sustain it (for me anyway).
A familiar story but I can’t help think there’s an even better film in here to be found.
#2wr wonky cottage

I adore the#nziff #NgāWhanaunga NZ shorts every year and was so pleased that #WhenTheGeeseFlew got a special mention and was deeply moved by both #GrowingStill and #Mirumiru all full of great films. Massey’s screening room is an excllnt new venue for the festival in Pōneke too!

#2wr talent burns

A good start to my #nziff - Brazilian film #baby is tough and aches as the complexities of interwoven lives, prejudice, sexuality and compassion are tested in often beautifully shot verite. Sublime casting (of course) and a gritty compassionate affection in this script. #2wr sentiment. family.

#nziff 2025 is a both a very short affair, and there are less films than usual - so it’s hard to get to what we’d like to. Nonetheless brace yourselves for the return of my terrible #2WR two word reviews channeling the ghosts of the old @danslevin.funeralsandsnakes.net Rancho Notorious Podcast

I say Jeruh because in his annual yesterday he boasted about working on substantial trades and he needs a #2WR bad and positive PR after botching the Parsons negotiations

One of the guys on Justin Rogers Substack said their was rumors out there about Jamo to Dallas for 12

At first I poo-pooed it…then I read that Jerry said today they’re working on substantive trades today and now I’m 🤔

It kinda adds up with Dallas looking for a #2WR & being linked to Golden

Need a #2WR and a CB.

Kupo struggles without a solid #2WR ... so we i say no